


Pant-Man

by Vee



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, Crimes & Criminals, Drunk Sex, F/M, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2004-05-08
Updated: 2004-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanji is a detective. Zoro is his hapless, put-upon assistant. But when the sun sets and the shadows come out to play, he is something more than that. Somehow, even though Sanji is a detective, he can't put this together. Then again, he does have a dozen other members of the criminal underworld on his tail. He can't be expected to waste all of his time on a notorious underwear thief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Back-Alley Rendezvous

**Author's Note:**

> Pant-Man is a phenomenon of weirdness that I can't quite explain. Call it a joint creative orgy of the most crack-brained variety, but whatever it is, I love it. It all began with my posting of an innocent little fanart on the One Piece Yaoi LiveJournal Community. Inu-Neko came back to post a piece of Japanese fanart, calling him "seductive Pant-Man Zoro". Somehow, without anyone even knowing it, least of all Inu-Neko and myself, a monster had been born that would eat the OPYAoi community for a couple of weeks. Yes, my dears, PANT-MAN was born! As ludicrous as the idea seemed.
> 
> When Inu-Neko posted this inspired bit of comicry art, she birthed the demon from her very loins. And when I fired back with an actual FIC using our twisted alternate universe, that demon was suckling at my teat. We just nurtured it. We had already fallen in love with it. Pant-Man was a little crack-baby, yes, but it was OUR little crack-baby.

Falcon-like eyebrows and emerald green eyes. I tried to keep my attention focused but that damned pink thing around his face kept distracting me. When I lifted my hand, tried to pull it away, he clenched my wrist with a grip so fierce and rock solid that it made me wince, made me abandon my efforts and simply lose myself in our kiss.

And so here, in this alley that smelt of mildew and spilt beer, it was going to happen. With a slight sneer I broke our kiss, took a deep breath, and opened my mouth wider to receive him again. His lips smeared mine, pried me wide as I could gape, his drunken kisses probing and plundering, sloppy and somehow sublime.

His embrace was regardless, as he spun me around and slammed me against the wall. My back pressed against the dirty bricks, and a moist something chilled through the fabric of my shirt. I moaned, half discomfort and half genuine desire. The liquor, of course that had been a lure. A ploy to render him helpless and at my mercy. But now, at least for a few more minutes, I was perfectly content to be at his. At least until I could stop thinking with my dick long enough to keep my mind on my motives for arranging our rendezvous.

Then, with fingers wet from my saliva, sloshed rum, and whatever else, he was pulling at my shirt, ripping it from my waistband until the shirttails hung wrinkled and starched and not quite loosely against my thighs. He seemed frustrated by their obstruction – I could hear him growling as he leaned into me, struggling to keep his bearings focused as he pawed beneath the fabric to pull at my zipper, pop open my buttons. I was remarkably still, considering that my body was screaming on the inside, wanting to tell him to hurry up, do this, and do that. But no, I bided my time, back to the clammy brick wall, legs slightly parted, chin angled up and trying not to take breaths too deeply from his overwhelming musk.

And really, I didn’t even like men.

But there was just something about him, about this moment, about this crazy obsession of mine and his aggressive drunken flirtations. His hands were unearthly to all my experience, huge compared to anyone else who had ever pushed my pants to my knees and grabbed me by the cock. He was greedy, the thieving bastard, and for a few moments he just stood there pulling at it, growling with little labored breaths. Probably taking some time to think things through. I know after ingesting such an amount of liquor I wouldn’t be in my best mental state, either.

It didn’t take him more than a few more seconds to spin me around and thrust me unbalanced against the wall. One of my hands reached up and tried to find purchase against the slimy surface, grimacing only a moment before I felt him touching me, licking me, on his knees to thrust his tongue into places I’d never known could be so sensitive.

For a split-second I cried out, and then I realized that this alley behind the seedy bar was not some private boudoir. I clenched my teeth and held back my voice – but after that it became harder. My fingernails scraped on slick stone and mortar as I twisted to lean my cheek against it, panting, pulling my face into a tight, agonized caricature of myself.

Before I even knew it he was fucking me, hurting me, thrusting himself so wanton and careless and deep that I felt my head spinning, my entire body nauseous for a moment. I struggled to keep myself up, but he kept his hand on my head, pushing me down, until my fingers were black from the slime and I was left no choice but to brace myself with my elbows, still wincing as he kept it up. Breathless and brain-dead I enjoyed it, this dirty, painful, drunken fuck, just wondering what sort of things he could be capable of in his sober state of mind.

I was shocked that he remembered me at all, when one of his hands miraculously left my hips and fingered my cock, coaxing me with slapdash little strokes until I came. My shirttails caught what didn’t drip down onto my pants and shoes, and I bit my lip, eyes watering and mouth quivering, until he started to pound me violently, hastily. His fingernails dug into the thin stretch of skin over my pelvic bone as he finally reached his own climax, leaving marks that would bruise by the next morning. I shrieked inwardly, and the only noise that left me was a tiny, barely audible whine. I could only imagine the juxtaposition of blood and come as he pulled out of me, stumbled back a bit, and coughed. As I panted, he did too, and for those pensive moments we didn’t look back at each other. My back felt broken but somehow I straightened up, and somehow I reached into the holster under my pantleg, retrieving the smallish .22 that shook in my hand as I pointed it at him.

His pants were still hanging open, and he still wore that ridiculous pink rag around his face. I, on the other hand, wasn’t faring much better, with my pants around my ankles and my entire body tenderized into numbness. He acknowledged that I was armed, and cocked one eyebrow severely.

“What’s this?” He slurred.

“You know what this is.” I replied, smirking in some roundabout, premature victory.

Calmly, even as I stepped forward, close enough to press the tiny barrel to his chest, he gathered himself, did up his pants, and stared me down. “If you kill me now, you’ll never find what you’re looking for.” He replied, smirking right back in a slipshod, inebriated sort of way.

I knew he was right, and I also knew I wouldn’t shoot him. I had known that when I left that evening; it’s why the gun wasn’t loaded, and why I had loaded him up in the first place. The secret shame I had was nothing, however, compared to the intense desire I had to get back what was rightfully mine.

“And by the way…” he smiled wider, his lips parting to reveal his rarely-shown toothy grin. One hand reached down and brushed the smattering of hair over my crotch. I was too stunned to move, “I like you without underwear, too.”

With a lightning quickness, then, he ran off, betraying every fumbling appearance of drunkenness he may have only allowed me to believe. The breeze still chilling me from the waist to the floor, I seethed after him, lowering my gun as I growled, “I’ll get you, Pant-Man…. _someday_ …”


	2. The Final Act?

So this was it. My foolproof plan. My coup de gras against him. I knew there was probably some proverb or adage about the prey luring the predator, but by that point my mind wasn’t making much sense about who was the bad guy and who was the good guy.

I just sat on the edge of the bed, fiddling with the revolver, spinning the cylinder with my thumb as I let the single bullet rest in my other hand. Up until now, I’d kept this gun unloaded. Really, I didn’t have any desire to shoot him. Once it became more than just a stupid case, once it became something far more personal, like obsession, like love…it ceased to be about justice and crime. It was just me, and him, and my old unloaded pistol.

Somewhere on the usually silent streets below, I heard a car pull up to the curb. I glanced back at the clock. 2:35 a.m. He was punctual.

Deceptively fluid in my motions, my palms sweating, I slid the bullet into the chamber and cocked my gun. I sighed.

This whole mess was just crazy, anyway. What was I doing, writing the date, the time, my very own private address, in the one place I knew he would find it? I’d invited him with his own trophy, writing as neatly I could on the white cotton fabric of another pair of underwear I’d never ever see again.

Faintly, in the background of my own thoughts, I heard the door to my shoddy apartment building close. Then footsteps on the clattering iron stairs. The Pekinese belonging to the crazy old woman on the second floor began to bark.

I wasn’t surprised that he had made our unofficial date. Not at all, in fact. Our quick meetings, in the face of business or pleasure, had been nothing if not amiable, nothing else if not just more steps in a dance that we were both determined to finish. I angled the pistol in my hands and let the moonlight cast a thin line of white down the matte steel barrel. My pulse was straining; I willed it to slow as the footsteps came closer, and took in a deep, cleansing breath through my nose.

The door to my apartment opened, and immediately I knew not everything was all right. If I knew as much as I postured to know about the elusive Pant-Man, he was certainly the type to knock. No, the door to my apartment was swinging wide with a creak, and then I heard a tentative, familiar voice.

“…Sanji?”

I sat up, and immediately sat the revolver aside.

“Zoro?” I perked up, standing halfway, sinking back into the mattress when my assistant came into full view, holding a tiny wrapped bundle in one hand, awkwardly adjusting his glasses with the other. My face fell a tiny bit. I couldn’t decide whether I was relieved or disappointed.

“Yeah, it’s….it’s me.” Eternally meek, this one. No wonder he seemed so frightened of me at times like these; especially in the throes of obsession, I had to be a right bastard to work for. He glanced down at the carpet, cleared his throat uncomfortably, and shuffled his toe against his pant leg.

“Why are you here?” I decided it was as good a time as any to light up a cigarette. As the smoke cast even more shades of grey into the moonlit darkness around us, I sneered at him, “I’m expecting company.”

“He’s not coming, Sanji,” he said, almost pleading with me, “this….” he extended the small bundle in his hands, “this is from Nami. She left it at the office tonight. I didn’t feel right….not letting you know.”

“Nami-san?” My voice wavered, lighter than air for a moment. Out of the corner of my eye I glanced down at my hand, at the plain gold band on my ring finger. We’d been engaged for six months now. The wedding date still wasn’t set. In fact, since this entire case had taken over my brain, I was having a harder time showing my face around the woman I loved more than life itself at times. There was no way she hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt somehow inadequate and helpless in the face of my larger concerns. But of course the complete asshole inside of me decided never to mention it, never even to give a second thought to her troubles.

My hands were shaking as I reached out and took the package from Zoro. For some reason I still hadn’t questioned his strange retort, that firm and decisive ‘he’s not coming.’

Somehow I knew what was in that package before I even opened it, hands fumbling over the gently knotted ribbon, letting it fall open to reveal a snug wrapping of paper around what turned out to be a very small token of what had once been something so monumental, so valuable, so incapable of being represented by a single item.

But there it was; Nami’s engagement ring, staring back at me as I plucked it from the bed of soft, wrinkled paper, holding it up, staring expressionless as I turned it back and forth in front of my face, needing the moment to contemplate it. I’d realized some weeks ago how very little I deserved her; but had I told her so? Of course not. I behaved the same as I always did – fawning and caring, of course, but never open, never communicative to what might have been on her mind. And what had been on her mind was now painfully obvious.

Emphasis on the ‘painful.’

“Sanji…” Before Zoro could even touch my shoulder with his hand, I lifted my own to hold it back. I closed my eyes and replaced the ring, gently wrapped it back in its little package, and set it next to my gun. “I’m sorry….she didn’t seem angry…when she brought it by…”

Of course she wasn’t angry. She probably wasn’t sad, either. The extent of what she felt for me was probably nil at this point, and probably never had been strong enough to want to get married, or ever set a wedding date. She probably didn’t care that I’d gotten distant, probably didn’t appreciate the gifts and the compliments I showered on her every single moment I was around her; she probably didn’t even care about my life, my obsession. She probably didn’t even care that I let him fuck me, for god’s sake. I should have known. I let all that slip through my fingers for this one chance…and now it was my assistant telling me ‘he’s not coming.’

“Fuck.” I breathed, soft enough to pretend that I hadn’t meant him to hear.

He wasn’t sure which way to move; as usual. That was why he made a perfect assistant. All I had to do was tell him where to go, what to do, exactly how to behave, and he did it. But now that I needed him to have the perfect word and the perfect timing, he was helpless. For a moment in my mind, I flashed on the smirking, uncaring face of Pant-Man….and, crazy as it was, I wanted him here instead. To say ‘I told you so,’ even though he’d told me nothing, and to dole out the punishment, whether verbal or physical, that I knew I deserved.

I was crying. Damnit.

As I sniffled with an ugly noise, I lifted my wrist to wipe the tears against my sleeve. But before I could even make contact, while the drops were still running down my cheek, I felt something softer and altogether perfect reach in to caress my face, to wipe it dry.

I opened my eyes and saw pink. Pretty, moonlit pink in sumptuous cashmere-cotton.

I’d never known the fabric was that rich, all those times I’d seen it, memorized it, tried so hard to touch it. As realization flooded my brain I couldn’t even bring myself to look up at Zoro. This was his confession, my humiliation and his secret triumph all at once. It was so subtle, so defiant of everything melodramatic and climactic that I’d expected this encounter to be. I just hung my head silently, crying quiet tears as he held the pink bandana patiently up to my face.

Minutes passed. Could have been days.

Finally I grabbed him by the wrist, welling up all the strength and courage that was still inside of me. Visions of Nami and visions of him – _both_ of him – clouded my judgment and let my anger take over in those moments. I threw him to the bed, knocking his ill-fitting glasses askew as I did. I wondered how I could have been so stupid, even as I grappled for my gun as if he was putting up a struggle of any kind.

“Did you really intend to shoot me?” he asked, smirking beneath me as I straddled him. It was painful, this closeness, this terrible betrayal. The tears weren’t stopping, but the emotions behind them were conflicting and morphing, boiling together into something terrifyingly unknown. I didn’t want to kill him, I realized, as I leveled the gun at his forehead and clenched my teeth. Not with his face this calm and blameless, his conscience so weightless yet mine so burdened.

I wanted to be like that, I realized, still strangled for words and pawing away tears with my other hand.

“What the hell did you do to me?” I hissed roughly.

He tilted his head slightly, and a dim smile crossed his handsome features. Funny; I’d never thought of Zoro as handsome before. “Apparently I made you fall in love with me.”

“Bastard!” I held the gun away, yet I still yearned for violence. I yearned for the sort that gave back, that hurt to dole out, that impacted skin on skin and made marks where it would be remembered by both parties. I swung my fist at his face, but he caught it, stilled it, and wrenched it forward, until I was face-to-face with him, nose-to-nose, breathing his breath and wanting his lips so badly. Not just anything, not just anyone’s lips, but _his_. This is why Nami would be a memory now. This is why I would have felt guilty with her, even if nothing had happened, even if the marriage had never collapsed into a little paper package. Because this close to him, or even miles away, for the last six fucking months, I’d wanted nothing more than him.

I felt the draft at the small of my back, the unmistakable looseness around my waist, and I welcomed a familiar feeling of violation. “How do you do that?” I asked, as I glanced over to find him twirling my underwear on his finger. My pants were sliding farther down my back, over the curve of my ass, now. Worse than that for my dignity, I was getting hard.

Not surprisingly, he ignored my question.

“Kiss me.” He whispered harshly, commanding.

“No, you kiss me.” I volleyed back.

“No, _you_ kiss _me._ ” He mimicked, infusing more force, more urgency, and more of a deadly grip on my wrist.

I remained stalwart, even as we caved into each other, his neck arching slightly toward me, my mouth falling ever-so-slowly toward his. A tear fell from my cheek to land below his eye, and I smirked. “You kiss me.”

“You kiss me…” He mumbled the last before our lips met in complete accord, neither kissing the other particularly, but kissing nonetheless. For all it was worth, we kissed, and we writhed, hands never touching one another even as we scrubbed our bodies together, making hungry little noises into each others’ mouths. I was happy not to be crying anymore, but now a different sort of pang flooded me, overwhelmed me. I felt a dam at the pit of my stomach, ready to burst right through to my heart if I didn’t say something, anything.

“Fuck me,” I said timidly, leaning as close to his ear as I could, propping myself up with my elbows, for some reason still clutching my revolver. Shakily I dropped it, wanting to tell him that no, I had never intended to shoot him. The safety had been on the entire time, even when the thing was pointed right between his eyes, “fuck me like you’ve never done it before. Hurt me or use me, it doesn’t matter, just make me feel it, make me love it, make me remember it.”

I was so lonely. I was so goddamned lonely.

So he fucked me. With as few words as possible, he made me soar and made me crash, left me little more than a wreckage of sweat and come before he rolled me into another position and did it all again. When my eyes brimmed with tears of exertion, and my face softened so that it appeared I might say something uncalled for, he would wipe my temples with his hot hand and assure me that he already knew.

Beneath a wall papered with news clippings and surveillance photos of his alter-ego, he cradled me in his arms, wrapped me like a pet in his lap, and fucked me sitting there, slowly and torturously, neither of us moving more than we had to. He lifted my legs at the knees and waited until I was a shivering nerve-ball of tension, nipping at my ear and letting his heart beat harder against my back as we both neared what would be a particularly satisfying orgasm.

It felt nice to fall onto a bed after all of that; so much better than a long drive home from a dark alley or the corner of a dark movie theater. But still, at his silent behest, I didn’t say anything to jeopardize the strangeness of the night.

In the morning, I would think clearer. I would take down the news clippings from my walls, tuck my gun back into the holster where it was never used, and then crawl back into bed for a few more hours’ sleep….with him.


	3. Encounter in a Movie Theater

I followed that flash of pink at the most inconspicuous pace I could, weaving into the oncoming flood of pedestrians leaving the symphony hall and the theatre, the restaurants that closed down when the city closed down. I would sometimes lose him, as my footsteps took me further into the crumbling, neglected historical district, craning my neck and casting echoes in the haunted, empty streets. He disappeared behind buildings, shot behind fences, sometimes went missing for half an hour at a time before he appeared again, teasing me, like it was some sort of game. I had to be mad to keep following him the way I did, all the way to the end of Marcadian Street where the old, cracked road curved into a roundabout, and headed right back in the opposite direction, toward the bright lights of the flourishing and lively downtown. Here, the buildings were all abandoned and cold in the night. What little stayed open so late was hardly worth registering – mostly figurehead businesses that kept up appearances and the family tradition by doing the work their fathers and mothers had done long ago into the former centuries. A drug store and a movie theater were the only beacons of life and light, as I stood on the sidewalk and looked around, wondering where to go next. I heard a noise and turned around, searching for the tingling chirp I’d heard of a bell against a door.

Behind me, a few doors back, a smiling, apple-cheeked old man waved at me as he turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ in the window of the five and dime. A five and dime, for god’s sake. I was out of my element. This area was all history and death, old churches and preservation societies, places where bridge clubs met on Wednesdays and where old rich women gave their money to feel like they’d done something good for the community. I couldn’t help but twist my lip and adopt an open-mouthed sneer, watching and waiting, not even knowing what I was expecting.

Process of elimination led me to the box office of the movie theater, where a middle-aged, unnaturally pleasant woman stood watch. “Busy night.” She remarked as I slid her a crisp one dollar bill – the price of admission to their 10:00 p.m. screening of ‘From Here to Eternity.’

I read some sarcasm in her tone, but I was never good at analyzing my elders. I cocked my visible eyebrow, and she chuckled self-consciously as she handed me a garden-variety ‘Admit One’ ticket. “We’re lucky to have one person show up on a Tuesday night, much less two,” She waved away the explanation as quickly as she had given in, “go on in, we’ll hold the projector.”

I managed a half-smile as I traipsed inside, into the mildew-smelling, decadent old lobby that someone must have loved an awful lot not to have changed since the mid-1960’s. Even the carpet was over forty years old, worn thin and faded by age and traffic. I would have been a little depressed by the portrait of inevitability, but my mind was just focused on getting into that theater. Two people, eh? I smirked and flipped my cigarette into the refuse bin at the entrance.

I might get him alone, after all.

The old woman must have been mistaken, I thought for a moment, because when I walked into the dark, narrow, coffin-like theater, the only other head I saw was a hatted, elderly head unrecognizable to me. My shoulders slumped involuntarily and I slinked into the second row from the back, well- removed from the other patron as I settled in to clear my thoughts against the backdrop of some classic, weightless entertainment.

Not three minutes into the iconic opening scene, I felt a hand curl unexpectedly around my face, settle on top of my mouth, and hold me tightly. For some reason I didn’t move, for some stranger reason I didn’t struggle. I opened my eyes wide and felt myself seize into tension as a voice, harsh and firm and unbelievably sexual, whispered into my ear:

“Don’t make a sound, don’t make a move.”

At that, my eyes fluttered to a close, and I nodded. Victim, I was not. Weak, I was most certainly not meaning to seem. But I guess I had wanted to hear that voice, and wanted him to believe that he had me where he wanted me. The upper hand certainly wasn’t mine in a situation like this - public, without a discreet escape -  after all, the case was closed, the crime would probably be mine to even bring it up again. Beyond that, I was humiliated. Starting to think I’d never catch him. Seeking to regain even the smallest bit of honor, by proving something, anything, to myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen his face, wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice, but by the time he slid noiselessly, ninja-like into the seat next to mine, I had to turn and take another look, as if I’d forgotten every detail all over again.

I wanted to speak, but gripped my armrests in silent defiance. My face expressed my melodramatic emotion, and I saw him smile in bemusement beneath the knotted pink fabric. “What are you going to do?” He whispered, quiet as a feather falling.

My heart surged, and a pain like twisting grabbed my chest. It was a strangely familiar but I didn’t want to believe it.

I took advantage of our silence, memorizing the slope of his nose where the handkerchief tied, the wicked, narrow-set eyes, the proud forehead, and his mouth –

There, I stopped for much longer than I should have. Even a second had been too long, but I lingered far beyond what a professional in my place would have. His lips were thin, long, and unspectacular, but something about the way his mouth was barely smiling, bottom lip pouting imperceptibly….

I wanted to suck on them.

He must have seen my eyes flare open as I reared back slightly, trying to find anything else to hold my attention. He was the picture of calm as my body rebelled silently under his nonchalant scrutiny. My eyes darted to and fro, not really resting until I felt him lift one warm, long-fingered hand, and place it on my thigh.

I hissed, but before I let anything else out, he reached up with his other hand and dimpled my lips with a shushing finger. His lips pursed slightly, and I heard the soft, impish whisper of his “shhhh….”

We sat motionless, still life, using the moment to calculate each other, to permutate our perceptions. I wanted to believe there was a reason I was feeling this way, but regardless of that, nothing could be an excuse for my behavior, my thoughts, the lust tickling me like something bubbling inside.

I opened my mouth and let my tongue graze his finger. He didn’t seem shocked; but he didn’t seem impressed, either. His skin tasted salty, manly. I flinched at it, at first, the roughness and the hardness. But I continued, breathing gusts of air against that single finger as I made my way over it like some sort of intoxicating lollipop. I must have been insane. I must have been desperate. Whatever I was, I was no longer nonplussed by his hand on my thigh. I wanted it lower, I wanted it deeper between my legs, I wanted those big, strong, salty fingers to justify my five-mile walk into this ghost town.

Slowly, I let his finger slide out of my mouth, let it pop wetly from my lips, as I realized with a blush that was covered by darkness just how much abandon I was exhibiting. I sneered at him, and tried to communicate my every intention to do terrible, vengeful things to him.

But right after this. Right after his hand stops kneading the softened muscles of my inner thigh, right after he stops leaning closer and breathing hot air against my neck. His lips were rough. They kissed the vein that pumped my pulse; he had to know at that moment how nervous I was.

And when he reached in to cup my crotch and what had very quickly become a full-fledged erection, my nerves skyrocketed. I shook a little in the seat, jostling and making a noise that, by any definition a small one, could be considered a fatal trespass in our current situation.

With a stern face, he replaced his hand on my mouth, and bowed his bird-of-prey eyebrows, more than a little disappointed. Damned if I was apologizing. And damned if I was going to let him stop now. I spread my legs wider, wished my trousers weren’t so tight around the hips, and bit my bottom lip beneath his palm.

It wasn’t until he sank to his knees, miraculously fitting perfectly between me and the seats in front of us, that I realized we hadn’t even kissed yet. It wasn’t until he buried his face against my still-clothed crotch that I regretted the fact. I wondered, my thoughts dirtier and more lurid behind the romantic pretense, if his mouth tasted anything like his skin. I wondered what his fingers felt like in other regions of my body. I wondered if I could ever taste him, swallow him, make him come.

The thoughts came so breakneck and furious that they didn’t even seem strange to me. In fact, they seemed perfectly natural; there was an odd euphoria in the cramped second-to-last-row of that movie theater, as Burt Lancaster and Donna Reed exchanged a few hackneyed lines on the screen and my nemesis pushed his mouth wet and aggressive against the length of the erection inside my pants. I was separated from his lips by only a thin stretch of polyester-cotton and a thinner stretch of….

Wait…

When I glanced down, my head hardly able to register what had happened, he was winking up at me, holding a very familiar pair of boxer-briefs between his teeth. My fly was open, my cock was straining naked against it, and I couldn’t think of a damn thing except  _how in the hell did he do that?_

With an angry, nondescript look on my face, I silently thrust my hips toward him, trying to keep the urgency and heaviness of my breath under control. He shoved my underwear into his back pocket, flashed me a toothy grin, and said:

“You take this off,” he tugged at the knotted end of his handkerchief, “and I’ll stop. I swear I will.”

I believed him. And I didn’t dare jeopardize my delicious torment.

His fingers liberated me and I shoved my back into the seat, heat rising through my veins, into my cheeks, burning me. I gritted my teeth as his tongue whisked away at my cock, kittenish licks that only lingered when a drop of precome leaked down to satisfy him. And then another. And then another. Finally he abandoned his sadistic teasing, and his lips grabbed me by the tip, sucking hard and firm, breaking my heart and leaving me breathless until my feet started struggling, straining for purchase against the slick concrete floor of the theater.

Internalizing my breath became difficult – I wanted to pant like a marathon runner, as my pulse throbbed in my cheeks and the tension welled in my stomach, fluttering the muscles around my abdomen, giving me a workout when I wasn’t moving at all. I tried not to aggravate my situation, tired not to glance down at him, but I couldn’t help it. It was too compelling a picture to watch his candy-pink tongue grazing the top of my dick, savoring me before his head covered me and started to bob in a smooth, quick rhythm, servicing me like he adored it, like he craved it, like this was something he had been waiting for a very long time to do.

I dug my fingers into his scalp. I caught the wispy spikes of green hair between my knuckles and pulled, then pushed, then tugged and twisted, as my thighs quivered and my feet lifted, as the feeling of total ecstasy took over me. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and recalled the picture-perfect memory of his lips, imagined how beautiful they would look painted with come. The shock of that thought in my head grabbed me, shook me, and pushed me over the edge.

And now, in the late night hours of remembering, I can’t decide whether he waited until I took that deep breath or not. After I spouted off burst after burst of incredible sexual satisfaction, and he took it all, after he fell away from me and I heard him pant for a moment, heard him wipe his mouth with his sleeve. I kept my eyes closed in my weakened neverland, and just sat there, quiet and deathly calm.

I took a deep breath and glanced up at the screen. The movie didn’t even matter anymore.

When I looked down at my feet, he was gone.

And so were my underwear, probably still flapping out of his back pocket. Only slight comfort was mine in knowing that he would be tasting me all the way home. All the same, I cursed him, stalking all the way home with legs like jelly, that still yearned for something more, something a bit more substantial and reckless.

On the way home, I passed a poster in the small Puerto Rican neighborhood near the symphony hall downtown. A poster featuring his very likeness, caricatured, but nevertheless a spot-on rendition.

‘VIVA PANT-MAN!’ As if he was some sort of revolutionary.

I sneered, ripped the poster off the wall, and hung it up above my bed with the rest when I got home.


	4. Meet Our Hero (At Last)

My car had been repossessed after a petty squabble with my bank over a $50,000 defaulted loan. Minor thing, really, nothing in the face of the grittiness I encountered every day in my chosen line of work. I only started riding the subway into the city every morning after my fiancé told me point-blank that I had to suffer the consequences of my own poor planning, and that no, she wouldn’t wake up three hours early just to give me a ride. I never questioned a word she said. I just wasn’t like that with her. I took my punishment like a good boy, then, hoping she would be proud of me as I squeezed in between the 8 a.m. commuters en route to the urban sprawl more than thirty minutes away.

A child was standing across from me, clinging to his mother’s overcoat and watching me intently. He was a rotten-looking kid, too well-groomed and ponced-up to be anything but a sniveling brat behind closed doors. I narrowed my eyes at him and wondered why he wasn’t in school. He kept right on staring. I sighed and decided to distract myself with the morning paper tucked under my arm.

I opened right to the police blotter as I did every Monday morning, sneering as the fresh ink rubbed off on my fingers and the pungent scent of newsprint curled into my nose to replace the piss smell of the subway.

Among the usual drug busts and domestic disturbances there were a few offbeat entries that made me smirk. Desecration of a Gravesite. Indecent Exposure. And my personal favorite, Criminal Mischief. There were so many stories behind that one catchall charge, and I loved coming up with possibilities in my head, especially now as I made the torturously long commute.

The passengers started to thin out as the train crept through the busier centers of town. The doctors all got off at one stop; the accountants got off at another. The soccer moms and wanderers started to peter off about three stops from my destination, as the scenery through the subway windows became less “cityscape grandeur” and more “urban decay.”

I hated the area in which I worked, but it brought in the business.

Finally, I was alone, only a few minutes from my final destination. Park Street Station. There wasn’t a Park anywhere near that Street, unless glass-scattered abandoned lots protected by barbed wire counted. I rolled up the paper, tucked it into my pocket, and leaned back, enjoying the space and the moment of solitude.

And this sets the scene for the very first time it happened. The very first time we “met,” so to speak. My hands were tucked behind my head as I relaxed back into the seat, my posture less than proper, my legs splayed wide. I knew the feeling of the track beneath the train as it neared Park Street Station, and I knew that I still had a minute to go.

In less than a second, it happened. A flash of feeling, a rush of movement gusting past me. I sat bolt upright and blinked, my hair askew, my reaction like that to a gunshot. But stranger than that, more disturbing than the ghostly almost-feeling that something had touched me….was the aftermath of the not-quite-assault.

I looked down at my legs, still splayed wide. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I always made it a point to believe my own two eyes. My witness was often the only weapon I had. And so when I saw my pants hanging open, saw the card sticking up from my gaping fly, and saw the starling lack of garment below that…I did what any sane person  would do.

I panicked.

By the time I flew into my office, stalking in with my thrift-store briefcase and the card clutched tightly in my hand, my assistant had already taken care of most of the morning’s compulsory follow-ups. Mostly solicitations for payment, as half of my clients never made good on their accounts. People who hired a private detective rarely did. But Zoro was better at diplomacy than I was – he knew how to keep his voice at a reasonable volume, how to sounds just the slightest bit threatening when he needed to. To hear anyone tell it, when I tried to sound threatening I just came off sounding comical. But I chose pride over testimony, and decided not to believe them. Besides, Zoro also knew that I was showing up later than usual thanks to my unsavory transportation situation. He was watering the bamboo plant on his desk when I blustered in, breezing straight to my chair and adjusting my truss as I passed. I hated going without underwear. It was uncomfortable and it made me feel far too vulnerable. The entire day was shaping up to be a bad one.

Zoro fumbled with his watering can, fiddled with the glasses on his face, and somehow managed to stutter a question in the face of my brusqueness. “Is everything all right? What’s wrong?”

He was fresh out of college, but then, so was I. I didn’t do extensive background checks on my employees so I didn’t bother to ask him why, with a degree in Business, he wasn’t pursuing avenues of work more lucrative and high-profile than working as secretary for a seedy, first-year private dick. To tell you the truth, we didn’t make it a point to converse much. Frankly, I sometimes hated to hear him talk, to stumble over his words and second guess any moment of assertiveness he might have had. But, he was a diligent worker. He was an intelligent kid. And he was bringing me a cup of coffee without needing to be asked.

“Ah, it’s not much, just that I was  _violated by a stranger on the subway!”_ I snapped, growling as I ground my teeth and turned the card over and over between my fingers.

I heard him stick his head out from the tiny enclave that we called ‘the break room,’ and then I heard the unmistakable sound a spoon stirring in a coffee cup. Two sugar, no cream. He never forgot how I liked it.

Occasionally I wondered if he might make a better wife than Nami-san.

“What? What are you talking about?….the coffee’s a little cold, I made it too early, I’m sorry.”

As he appeared holding my eleven-year-old Garfield mug in his hand, I leaned back and pointed at my crotch. “Some bastard stole my underwear.”

As with all things he did, he probably didn’t mean to do it, but somehow Zoro lost control of the mug in his grip when I said this. The thing went flying right at me, as our hands flailed like crazy in the air, trying to stop it, although the coffee was already soaking me, not quite as cold as he had led me to believe. In fact, it was downright hot, and it hurt. Beyond that, this suit was only two weeks old.

“GOD DAMNIT!” I barked, as the mug fell to the shag-carpeted floor of the office with a thump and a half-roll, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR!? SHIT!”

“It was an accident! I’m sorry!” He whined like a child defending himself, as he fell to his knees and retrieved the mug, reaching with his other hand for a stack of low-rent brown paper towels that I stole in bulk from gas station bathrooms. Not even taking a moment to adjust his glasses (which surprised me), he straightened up and started to towel off the front of my shirt. I sighed loudly, groaned in utter aggravation, but for some reason I didn’t think to swat his hands away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he repeated desperately, shaking his head in disbelief at his own stupidity.

Maybe he was just distracted, or perhaps I should have swatted him away when I had the chance, but when his hands toweled lower they managed somehow to fall into direct contact with a generous handful of my very apparent manhood.

For a second, both of us shut up.

“Sorry again.” He whimpered meekly, and withdrew his hand. I scrutinized him, noticed he was blushing, and decided not to rub it in. I’d always had suspicions that he was gay; guys like that didn’t leave college without having a romantic entanglement or two, and most guys were  _certainly_ more interested in my fiancé when they met her. I think that was why I hired him to begin with; he hadn’t made it a point to eye-fuck my girl at first sight.

I wondered momentarily why I was acting so calm after such a textbook bad touch, but as he slid to the side and scrambled to his feet I seemed to forget that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all. Right now I was most concerned with the card that was still in my hand.

“Pant-Man.” I said flatly.

“What-Man?” He repeated. Still blushing, I noticed out of the corner of my eye.

“Pant. Man,” I repeated firmly, “ ‘You’ve just been robbed by the Pant-Man.’ See?” I held up the card that had previously made very intimate contact with the front of my britches. I wondered if he might get along with it rather well, then.

“Well, at least he’s polite about it. Going to all that trouble to identify himself and everyth—wait.” Zoro had these moments. He was a treasure trove of useless knowledge and reference information, especially when it came to this town. So, the moment he spouted off that tell-tale ‘wait,’ and his eyes lit with revelation, I perked up.

He trounced through the mountain of paperwork that sat in stacks around both our desks (file cabinets were too expensive at this point), and thumbed through the cubby holes that lined the walls. They were grossly mis-labeled – once upon a time we had sought to catalog local newspapers, community bulletins, phone books, anything that would help us track down anyone in the city. But the neatly labeled bins were overflowing with extraneous crap, which somehow he still managed to make sense of.

Finally he gave a hushed ‘aha’ and pulled a yellow-tinged newspaper out from the very middle of a larger stack. I cocked an eyebrow in quiet amazement. “I knew it,” he said, unfolding the paper and turning it around, “his case has been closed for six months, but he’s a bit of a local celebrity.”

I didn’t really read the papers until recently, so I wouldn’t have known. But there, on the cover of this old, withering copy of ‘The Beacon,’ was a slightly blurred photograph of a night-shaded fellow sporting a jaunty pink bandana, tied at the nose in a way that was more laughable than memorable.

The headline: “Pant-Man Case Dismissed!” The sub-headline: “Commissioner Higgenbotham Retires Investigation of the Lone Underwear Burglar.”

The look on my face suggested he was joking.

Zoro scoffed. “You’ve never even heard him MENTIONED? How long have you LIVED here?”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “About four months.”

“Well, no wonder,” he rolled his eyes – HE rolled his eyes at ME, I regarded with an incredulous stare – and scanned the article as he spoke, “you wouldn’t have heard of him. He only terrorized – well, I shouldn’t say  _‘terrorized’_ , exactly – this city until the investigation was dropped. Then he sort of fell out of it! He hasn’t struck since, actually, not that anyone has heard of. Oh my god!” He looked over at me, eyeing me with gleaming, like I was the Buddha, “this could be HUGE! You have to go to the paper with this!”

“FUCK NO!” I cried immediately, taken aback that he would even suggest it, “trust me, that is the WORST possible thing I could do for business! No one wants to go to a private detective who had to get the POLICE to solve his own problem. Sheesh.”

He seemed to understand, so he didn’t press the issue. He flagrantly left the paper on his desk, though. For a few minutes we went about our work, as I booted up my gray-market laptop and set to doing some case-related research via our very illegal internet connection. Zoro busied himself with a few more calls.

When he hung up with Mrs. Cavendish I looked over at him, and puffed on the fourth cigarette of the morning. “I’m gonna catch him myself.” I smirked. Not “I want to” or “I will try to,” but “I’m gonna.”

And that, since you absolutely positively had to know, was how it all began.


End file.
